


The State of You

by toastweasel



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: F/F, a whole bunch of drabble oneshots because i can
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-30
Updated: 2018-05-26
Packaged: 2019-02-08 20:55:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 6,502
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12872832
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/toastweasel/pseuds/toastweasel
Summary: Moicy drabble shots because I've descended into permanent hell.





	1. Assertion, Chin Tilt, Sweater

**Assertion**

“Dr. O’Deorain? Might I have a moment of your time?”

“Consultation fees are posted on the door,” the scientist says, without looking up from her computer screen.

Angela looks. They are indeed, posted on the door, in a list of monetary amounts and the services one can purchase. “Fifteen euros for _listening intently_?”

“A thoughtful reply with cost you ten euros more.” The line is delivered with no inflection, only matter-of-factness.

The doctor pauses and evaluates the lanky woman stretched out behind the lofted desk, clicking repeatedly with a wireless mouse at something on the screen. She does not seem to be kidding. Angela wonders what she is working on. “You’re joking, right?”

Doctor O’Deorain finally looks up from her computer screen to reveal the darkest pair of blue eyes Angela has ever seen. “My dear, I never _joke._ If you insist on standing at the door asking questions, it will be a euro a question starting the next time you open your mouth.”

Angela opens her mouth, then closes it. She reaches out into her pocket and pulls out a coin. She crosses the room and sets it firmly next to the scientist’s mouse, daring her to object. “Here’s how this is going to work. I’m going to introduce to you the topic that I came here to discuss. If you are interested, in the spirit of mutual discovery and self-interest you will wave your consultation fee.”

Doctor O’Deorain blinks in surprise before a Cheshire smile tugs its way across her thin lips. Angela wonders if anybody has ever taken her up on her stupid sign. The scientist in question leans back in her chair with her stupid smug grin and says, “I’m listening.”

* * *

**chin tilt**

Whenever Moira kisses her, she always grabs Angela’s face. The scientist’s slender fingers cup her cheeks and pull her in, sometimes biting into the skin. Other times they wrap around the back of her neck and her thumb presses up against the bottom of her jawbone, tilting her face upwards. Either way, the touch is meant to pull her in close so Moira can take control.

It’s a show of dominance. Which makes sense, Angela thinks, because dominance is practically written into the geneticist’s DNA. Moira’s entire being imbues confidence—the way she talks, the way she walks, the way her shoulders sit when she stands—and that confidence reflects in the way she takes on the world.

Angela has confidence, too. It’s one of the reasons their relationship is so volatile—neither one of them are one to back down from anything. Both would rather engage in a knock down dragged out battle of wits than tuck their tails between their legs and bow to the other’s sensibilities.

That’s why whenever Moira kisses her in that hard, controlling way that she seems to have down to a science, Angela bites her back to remind her that she is not the only dominant one.

 

* * *

 

**Sweaters**

It isn’t until Angela has worked with Moira for almost two years that she gets to see her in more casual clothing.

She sees her on the train, as she heads to Rigi-Kaltbad for a long weekend of much deserved rest and relaxation. The geneticist is standing, gripping one of the hand rails as she reads something off her holoscreen. She’s clearly a pro a train reading and barely sways as the train jogs along towards Centrale, where Angela will switch trains to get to Rigi-Kaltbad. The way she is holding the hand rail tugs the hem of her crew neck sweater up, exposing her stomach.

Angela is just as arrested by the crew neck as she is by the thin strip of pale skin.

She’s never seen Moira outside of her dress shirt, lab coat, and tie. Hell, she’s never really seen Moira outside the _lab_ before, except at formal Overwatch events where Moira dresses in even sharper clothing than she wears in the lab.

As with all of Moira’s clothing, from lab wear to formal wear, the sweater is cut more towards the masculine side of the spectrum than the feminine one. It emphasizes her broad shoulders and obscures her thin waist. She still wears slacks, and nice shoes—leather, brown to go with the grey of her slacks and the blue of the crew neck—even on the train.

Angela wonders if there is a reason Moira dresses in semi-formal clothing in her everyday life, or if she just likes to look nice at all times.

Moira gets off at three stops before Centrale, without noticing her, leaving Angela to her thoughts. Eventually the doctor forgets about it, more concerned with making sure she makes her train transfer properly. She only remembers the incident when she sees Moira the next week, as she strides into the experimental technologies lab wearing her usual lab coat and tie.

It’s another year until Angela sees Moira behind closed doors, sprawled on her couch in boxers briefs, a v-neck, and sex tousled hair, reading from one of the pretentious books she favors. The Irish woman sips tea as Angela watches and occasionally reads aloud a particularly egregious quote for her to laugh at.

This is the Moira that Angela Ziegler loves.


	2. bite; robe

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I swore I wasn't going to write Angela getting all *w* over Moira but then someone made me an offer I couldn't refuse. My bad.

**-/-**

**bite**

-/-

Angela was exhausted.

The mission had been a success, but they’d lost someone. A young woman, all of twenty-two, a well-trained soldier who had been in the wrong place at the wrong time when a mine had exploded into their unit.

She had bled out before Angela could save her.

The doctor had been a poorly-concealed wreck the whole flight back to Switzerland.

She knew people were going to die. It was inevitable, even with her great skill as a doctor. Even with her prototype Caduceus staff making leaps and bounds in field testing.

While there was war, people were always going to die.

The plane landed, and Mercy went to change. She stripped of her uniform and scrubbed grime and dried flecks of blood from her body in the shower. It took her almost half an hour to coax herself out of the shower and get going; she’d been given the rest of the day off, but she had work to do. Even when all she wanted to do was go to bed.

 First, though, she had to put the prototype away and record her field notes before she forgot them.

She dragged herself out of the shower and, once dressed appropriately, shuffled down from her quarters to the experimental lab. Her heels clicked against the floor, drowned in the noise from the base. The everyday shuffle of soldiers and scientists out and about, going to and fro about their orders and their business of the day.

Mechanically Angela pulled her ID on its retractable lanyard from the clip on her lab coat pocket and held it against the laboratory doors. The lock dinged cheerfully and swooshed open.

She stepped inside.

The lab was mostly empty. It was almost lunchtime, Angela figured, so most of the usual suspects were probably off for lunch. However Dr. O’Deorain, who seemed to almost never eat, sleep, or do anything remotely human, was fussing with something at one of the stainless steel tables by the window. At the sound of the doors opening she stopped and straightened up. With her prodigious height, she always seemed to be bent over something.

“Welcome back, _Mercy,_ ” Moira taunted as soon as she saw her.

“Not now,” Mercy snapped as she strode across the lab to the table she had claimed for her own research on the Caduceus staff. “I’m not in the mood.”

“Not in the mood?” Moira asked, her brogue laced with innuendo and mirth.

Angela ignored her. She broke the staff up into its parts and then set the head in the cradle. “Athena, download the new field data on the Caduceus staff prototype into my Experimental Research folder and date it with yesterday’s date.”

The geneticist perked up at that. She came over and looked at the data streaming onto the holoscreen. “And how did it hold up to its field test?”

“Well enough.”

Moira narrowed her eyes at Angela’s continuing clipped tones. Much to the doctor’s chagrin, she lifted the glass in front of her eye to read the screen more closely. Then, sharp as a knife, she reached out and tapped a nail on the one piece of data Angela had hoped she would not see. “It failed.”

“It didn’t fail.”

A well-manicured eyebrow winged upwards. “Then what is this?”

Angela was quiet for a moment. She pressed her lips together. “A soldier died. That’s her heart stopping.”

“Ah, and there it is,” the geneticist purred. “The reason for your _mood._ Upset you weren’t able to play God?”

“Fuck _off.”_

Angela immediately regretted her outburst. She did not normally rise so quickly to O’Deorain’s bait, but she was tired and upset. She knew that Moira would continue her needling now that she knew she had gotten to her.

“Language, angel.”

The doctor grit her teeth.

“So what are you going to do, hm?” Moira asked, completely unperturbed by Angela’s lack of response. She reached forward with an impossibly long finger and scrolled through the list of data, eyes tracking the staff’s highs and lows. “Are you going to stay up all night and figure out a way to cheat death, or are you going to slick back to your quarters with your tail between your legs and lick your wounds in solitude?”

“I’ll lick you in a minute.”

The geneticist chuckled, low and throaty. “While I would like nothing more than that, darling, I do believe you have more pressing matters at…hand.”

Angela flushed.

“My advice? Look beyond your precious cells and nanobots.”

That was always Moira’s advice.

“Thank you, Dr. O’Deorain, for your fascinating contribution to my research,” the doctor said sweetly, then hardened her tone. “I’ll call you when I care.”

Moira shrugged and reached up to return her lens back in front of her eye. “I’ll be waiting.”

-/-

**robe**

-/-

Angela can’t remember what she went to Moira’s quarters for. She remembered five seconds ago, before all traces of coherent thought left her the moment the geneticist opened the door in her robe.

There’s a mug of tea, too, and glasses, and the fact her hair is falling gently into her eyes suggests Moira recently showered. The glasses and the mug and the hair are all well and good, but Angela’s thoughts were arrested by the robe, not the domesticity. (Well, at least mostly by the robe. The domesticity takes up at least 25% of her focus.)

The robe. A silk one, long and purple and expensive, tied loosely around her waist and coming apart at the fold. There is far more cleavage and long, lanky pale legs than should be allowed by decency’s standards.

(But then again, nobody would every accuse Moira of being a _decent_ sort of human being. Quite the opposite in fact. She has been known to walk through the locker rooms in the buff after a mission.)

Angela realizes after about two and a half seconds of staring that it is more likely that not that Moira is _just wearing the robe._

Her cheeks heat up at the thought there is nothing at all underneath that long length of purple silk.

“What’s the matter, Ziegler?” the geneticist taunts, all smug smiles and sultry tones as she leans against the doorframe to her quarters, tea still in hand. “Have you never seen another women’s body before?”

“I—not—that’s not—” Angela has not forgotten how to speak in this way since her first presentation in med school. She clamps her mouth shut and tries to regroup.

The Irish woman crooks an eyebrow takes a sip of her tea, an action that should not be as sexy as it is considering the circumstances (or is, perhaps, because of them).  When the doctor does not say anything with haste, she says, “Well? Spit it out, Ziegler, I haven’t got all night.”

Angela belatedly remembers the folder in her hand. Right, the folder. The results! The results in the folder. Right. She came here to give Moira the results because she knew that she would want them immediately, lateness of the hour be damned.

 She holds said folder out in front of her. “The…your experiment finished running in the lab. Here’s the data.”

“Ah, excellent.” Moira sets her tea on some surface out of Angela’s view and takes the folder. She flips it open with one long finger and read the first row of numbers over the tops of her glasses.

Angela holds her breath. She wonders if Moira near or far sighted. She has never seen her with glasses before. Are they just for reading, or does she wear contacts?

“If you’re going to continue to darken my doorstep, you might as well come in,” the geneticist says suddenly, snapping the folder closed and straightening so Angela could come in if she wished.

The doctor in question panics and shakes her head so rapidly her ponytail bounces against the side of her neck. “Oh—n-no, I can’t stay. I just came to drop the results off before going to bed.”

“Hmph, suit yourself,” Moira replies, suddenly aloof and disinterested. “Let me know the next time you plan on dropping by so I can prepare.”

“What?” Angela asks, her mouth dry.

“If you wish to oogle me in my robe once more, all you have to do is ask.” Before the doctor can reply in indignation Moira continues, “I’ll bring out the whiskey and sketching materials and we can make a session of it.”

Somehow Angela regains her wit. She draws herself up to her full height, which is actually rather tall, all things considered, and says flatly, “I’m reporting you to HR.”

Moira’s laugh is deep and throaty in response. “It wouldn’t be the first time you’ve threatened to do so, my dear. When are you actually going to go through with it, hm?”

“Good _night_ , Doctor O’Deorain,” Angela says sharply, turning and marching away from the geneticist’s quarters and towards her own. She hears the Irish woman chuckle, then shut the door with a clink behind her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Look, I know the two oneshots are in two separate tenses, but I don't care. I don't!
> 
> I hope you enjoyed them anyway!!!


	3. Morning Coffee; Domestic Life

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompts from the 12 Days of Moicy thing on the Moicy Discord :) Doing things in the proper order is for those who have their shit together!

**Morning Coffee**

Doctor O’Deorain does not drink coffee; at least, not before about nine o’clock in the morning. At morning mess the geneticist always fills her mug with hot water and grumbles under her breath about the tea bags and how the ceramic mugs make her tea taste.

Angela always ignores her whining. She lets the disgusting instant mess hall coffee stream into her mug and tries not to think about the taste as she knocks back her first cup. Angela herself prefers a dark roast, the richer the better, but she cannot afford to be picky. While she does have the set up for a decent brew in her quarters, she rarely has time in the morning. She needs the caffeine and hates the way caffeine pills make her feel—so she sucks it up and drinks the instant coffee in the mess hall.

Nobody else seems to mind how exceedingly awful the mess hall coffee is, except maybe Reinhardt. He is known for preferring his coffee brewed so thick and dark it’s more of a sludge than an actual liquid. Whenever he makes coffee, Angela always accepts a cup if it’s offered. Granted, it’s not a good as the stuff she imports straight from Vienna (and sometimes Rome, if she wants to splurge), but it’s infinitely better than anything at the base otherwise. 

O’Deorain does not have the same qualms. Somewhere around ten, the geneticist switches from tea to coffee, and she’ll drink anything put in front of her. Good, bad, it does not seem to matter to her as long as it gets caffeine in her bloodstream and puts her back to work.

Angela routinely wonders how she can drink the stuff that sits in the pot in the longue. That stuff is, if possible, even worse that the mess hall coffee.

(It doesn’t stop her from drinking at least two cups of the stuff a day, more if they have a deadline or have to work late. But goddamn if she won’t complain about it in the hope that someone will finally pony up and buy them _proper_ coffee, and not the Folgers swill that Jack drinks with something close to religious fervor. Where Americans got the idea they could blend coffee was anybody’s guess.)

Both of them drink it black, but the Irish woman tends to savor hers longer than Angela. The doctor usually just pounds it down to avoid the cheap taste, but O’Deorain will often take a bit of a break to sit in the longue with her cup and scroll a bit on her communicator, checking the news or watching videos of rabbits or whatever it is she does in her free time.

Angela does not care; she leaves her to it and returns back to the lab…until the siren call of the pot (no matter how disgusting the coffee is inside it) calls her back later.

* * *

**Domestic Life**

 They rarely had a sit down dinner together. Their late nights had only gotten later since they had become an item, mostly because they both had an insatiable work ethic and fed off each’s ethic manic energy. They regularly forgot to eat completely and subsisted on dinners of take out of sandwiches from the vending machines.

“We really should set an alarm for the canteen,” Angela murmured as they dined on sandwiches in the longue for the fourth night in a row.

Moira quirked an eyebrow and leaned back in her chair, one long leg folded over the other. “As if that swill is any better.”

“True, but it’s not mayonnaise and ham for the four night in a row.”

Moira snorted in amusement and picked her coffee up to sip. “And what would you prefer instead?”

“Anything! Real food…” Angela trailed off to think about it. “Fish. I haven’t had fish in ages.”

“Fish is not something they cook in bulk here, no,” Moira allowed.

“They sell river perch down in the market in town, I just never have time to go down there,” the doctor lamented. “And then I’d have to come back and cook it and I’m certain everyone would complain about the smell…”

Moira made a noncommittal noise, her mismatched eyes wandering briefly over to the underutilized stove and oven of the longue.

Angela sighed. “One of the perks of communal base living, I suppose.”

“Quite.” Moira set her mug down and got to her feet. “Shall we? This resurrection breakthrough of yours is not going to make itself.”

The doctor sighed again and stood up, gathering their trash as she went.

.

.

.

Three days later Angela was curled up on the couch in her quarters, reading a book. She had wanted to spend her Saturday with her girlfriend, but they had spent another late night in the lab on Friday. By the time she had woken up the next morning, Moira had disappeared off to God knows where and had not reappeared even by early evening. Angela supposed she should be worried, but Moira was a big girl and could handle herself.

_“Doctor Ziegler?”_

Angela jumped at Athena’s sudden voice. She still had not gotten used to that. “Yes?”

_“Doctor O’Deorain is asking for you.”_

“She is, is she?”

_“She requests your presence in the third floor longue.”_

“Of course she does.” Angela sighed and stretched, sitting up. “I’ll be down soon.”

Angela slipped on her canvas shoes and headed down the halls for the longue in question. The door was closed when she arrived, so she pressed her ID card to the reader and door slid open. “What did you—oh!”

Moira was standing at the counter near the stove, her sleeves rolled up flawlessly past her elbows and a look of focus on her as she plated two seared filets of fish. “It took you long enough to get here.”

“I didn’t know–you made dinner?”

“Observant,” the geneticist quipped dryly. “The next thing you’ll tell me is that I spent all afternoon in the town market looking for ingredients, including your bloody _river perch._ ”

Angela gawped. Moira rarely did anything for herself, let alone other people.

“You…”

Moira ignored her and picked up the two plates, carrying them over to one of the boothed longue tables. When she turned around and saw that Angela was still rooted to the spot in the doorway she sighed in irritation. “Are you going to come eat or did I waste my Saturday doing something you won’t even enjoy?”

“No, I just—I’m surprised.” Angela came in and closed the door. Moira had set the table with silverware and cloth napkins pilfered from the dining hall, but there was a bottle of white wine and two glasses sitting by the plates. “I can’t believe you did this.”

“I have my moments, just like everyone else.”

The doctor rolled her eyes and stepped in, grabbing her girlfriend by the front of her shirt (she wasn’t wearing a tie, and the top button of her shirt was undone) and pulling her down for a kiss. Moira chuckled, and pulled away after a moment.

“Come, let’s get this eaten before it gets cold.”

 


	4. tie; edits; stone; grey

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> tie; edits; stone; grey

**Tie**

It’s the first thing she notices about Moira.

It’s not her heterochromic eyes, or the sneer that accompanies the one in her voice, or the way her hair is gelled back _just so._

No, it’s her tie.

Purple or teal. Skinny. Silk. Always perfectly knotted, accented with a tie clip if she’s presenting.

She certainly could teach Cadet Oxton a thing or two, Angela thinks, who nine times out of ten looks like she lost a battle with a weed whacker. The only time Angela had ever seen Lena with a correct knot in her tie was the time Moira had taken pity (or perhaps disgust) on her the night of an Overwatch gala.

The geneticist had looked ludicrous with a bright orange tie looped around her neck over her already perfectly tied one, but Lena had beamed when Moira pulled the neatly knotted orange silk from around her neck and arranged it back around the cadet’s.

The smile didn’t vanish when Moira snapped at her to stand still so she could fix it. In fact, it stayed put all evening, long after Moira had shooed her off. Angela had watched the whole thing from the sidelines, and smiled softly into her champagne when the geneticist turned and fussed with her own eldridge knot in the reflection of the ballroom windows upon Oxton’s departure.

In those early days, she had only seen Moira ever loosen her tie once.

It was after a particularly disaster of a meeting with Commanders Reyes and Morrison. Something had gone wrong with the tech Moira had shown them. Angela was not privy to the details at the time, but Moira had come back to the experimental lab in a temper.

The briefcase with the offending technology was tossed carelessly onto a work station with a clatter. Moira had gone to her desk and reached for her emergency flask of whiskey in the bottom drawer. Despite the fact it was barely past noon she flicked open the catch and took a liberal swig.

When she caught Angela’s disapproving glare, she simply stated “Needs must,” and took another swig. It was after the third that she had sunk into her chair, shielded her eyes behind one hand, and loosened her tie with another.

The soft disgruntled muttering in Gaelic, the whiskey, the irritation in her slouch…they were all signs she had messed up. But Angela knew Moira had truly mucked it all to hell from the state of her tie.

She got up and made the Irish woman a cup of tea.

* * *

 

**edits**

“You’ve been staring at that damned screen for two days,” Moira drawled from where she was stretched out behind her desk, working on blueprints for some thing or another. “Send it to me if you’re so worried about it.”

Angela looked up from her computer, blinking owlishly. She had been working on and refining her newest paper for publication for the past week and a half. She had not slept for two days, and was nowhere close to finishing her edits. It was due at midnight, but her brain had shut off five hours ago.

“Are you serious?”

“Certainly.”

Angela did not take the time to wonder about Moira’s intentions. She was so desperate for a break she saved her point and sent the article without a backwards glance.

It pinged as a notification on Moira’s desktop.

Angela stood from her desk. “How long?”

“It’s what, fifty pages?” Moira asked, finally looking up from her computer. “I’ll have it for you in four hours.”

“Thank you.”

.

.

.

Angela returned after five hours, which included a snack and a nap. Much to her surprise, there was a mug of coffee on her desk and thick packet of papers on her keyboard when she returned.

“You’re late.”

“I know,” the doctor grumbled, and picked up the packet of papers. The paper was covered in Moira’s nearly illegible scrawl. “Really?”

“What?”

“Can’t you use track changes like a normal person?”

“And then what would you learn?” Moira asked. “You’d simply accept the changes and not think about implications.”

Angela shot her a dirty look, but knew she was right. She sighed and picked up the coffee, then grimaced when she discovered it was cold. Great.

Moira stretched languidly in her chair, then stood. She came and plucked the mug from Angela’s hands with long figures. “I’ll warm that up. You get to work—you’ve not much time left, and I’d hate for all my work to be for naught.”

* * *

 

**stone**

“Are you sure you don’t want me to—” Angela had barely gotten through her sentence before Moira had grabbed her wrist and guided it away from between her thighs.

“No. No, I’m…exceptionally old fashioned.”

Angela’s eyebrow rose from where she lounged naked besides her lover. “Really? The century’s dead pop music in your playlists and the pretentious two-hundred year old homoerotic poetry on your bookshelves could never have tipped me off? The fact that you _have_ bookshelves is old fashioned enough.”

Moira coughed and looked off over Angela’s shoulder; the faraway look in her gaze surprised Angela; she never thought Moira could even _get_ emotional. “Not…quite in that way.”

“Hmm.” Angela turned onto her back and stretched languorously, her back arching and limbs flailing as she removed the kinks their play had bought to her muscles. “In what way, then?”

The geneticist sighed and sat up as well. “It’s complicated.”

“Then uncomplicated it for me.”

Moira glanced down at her, then over at her bookshelves. She swung her feet out of the bed and walked over to them; Angela admired her backside and long legs as she went. “There was a term for it…a hundred years ago. It’s disappeared from our modern lexicon.”

“What was it?”

Pale fingers paused from where they were skimming titles, in search of the right one. “Stone.”

“…Stone?”

“Mmm.” Moira finally pulled the correct book off the shelf and brought it back over to Angela. “I suppose it is the ultimate irony. The one who studies the evolution of our species is stuck in an identity of the past.”

Angela sat up and took the book. “And what does it mean…?”

“Stone?” Moira asked with some amusement, reaching down for her shirt on the floor, “Or butch?”

“I know what a butch is,” the blonde replied. “I’m just not familiar with the meaning of ‘stone.’”

“Those who are stone do not appreciate being sexually touched by their partners,” Moira informed her almost robotically as she buttoned her shirt. “Specifically genitally.”

Angela frowned down at the cover of the book. “Is it like…what is the old term? Asexual?”

Moira shrugged gracefully, then reached down for her pants.

“So that’s why…” Angela trailed off, and it was clear she was replaying every sexual encounter she had thus far had with her. “But you are okay with…?”

“Fucking you?” Moira asked, and a small smirk twisted up the corner of her lips.

Angela pinked a bit. “Well I wouldn’t put it that crudely but…yes.”

Moira’s smirk widened; she ran a hand through her hair after she buttoned her pants. “I enjoy the act of sexual intercourse, just not when it is turned on myself.”

The doctor made a soft noise and set the book aside. “Well you won’t see me complaining.”

“Of course you don’t,” Moira practically purred, and stopped in the search for her tie so she could lean over the bed and slide her fingers back along the inside of Angela’s thighs. “At the end of the day you will always surrender to my will, won’t you, angel?”

* * *

 

**grey**

Moira O’Deorain is forty-eight years old.

There is grey in her hair.

With hair so fire-y red, it is hard to see, but it’s there. It sparkles in the morning light, when the rising sunlight shines through the window and her hair looks like spun carnelian. The grey glints at her temples and scatters through the rest like veins of quartz, quartz that camouflages into the rest when she adds gel. It is not her intention, to hide the grey with the shine that the styling product brings, but it certainly is the result.

Moira O’Deorain is forty-eight years old.

There are frown lines on her brow and crow’s feet at the corners of her eyes.

From years of frowning at problems, squinting at screens, scowling at the shenanigans of her parents, classmates, coworkers. For years of looking into the haze and darkness of uncertainty for the answers she so desperately craved to discover.

She does not mind them, never has, even when they started to appear in her thirties. She has not, like some, looked for ways to remove them from her skin. She has no desire to bio-engineer them from her very flesh; that is too trivial a pursuit for her skillset. Her gaze is set much higher.

They are a badge of her age, of her struggles and the things she has seen.

Moira O’Deorain is forty-eight years old.

She sees the way young lesbians stare as she gets a drink at her favorite bar. She sees the gazes of the ones like her, the ones who prefer androgyny, linger. Their eyes track up and down her long frame, inspecting the fit of her carefully tailored clothing. She watches them struggle to decide if they want to _be_ her, or if they want to _fuck_ her (or, rather, be _fucked by her_ ; she can see the hunger, the curiosity in their eyes).

Those youngsters make her laugh. They are great entertainment; they get drunk and dance themselves absolutely silly on the dance floor. They laugh with each other, and grind on each other, and quite often spend the later part of the night falling over themselves to make out sloppily on any surface vaguely stable.

She likes to watch them. She remembers being that young once. Never quite as free-spirited, perhaps, but she drank her fair share of liquor and fucked her share of girls in the bar bathrooms. She remembers seeing the older butches at the bar, and she remembers how she gained power from their presence.

She has no real _need_ or _desire_ to be at this bar. She is not looking for a partner—she is married to her work, after all—and she is not particularly interested in dancing or socializing. But as an amusement after work, it serves quite well. She sits at the corner of the bar with her whiskey, and watches the children make complete and utter fools out of themselves.

Moira O’Deorain is forty-eight years old.

She would never admit that she enjoys the way some of the young ones leave with stars in their eyes. But if the young butches leaves with their backs a little straighter, and they fuck their girlfriend’s little harder after seeing her greying-hair, age-wrinkles eyes, and handsomely tailored suits, she would not be upset.

In fact, it might even make her smile.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lesbian Moira gives me life. :)


	5. Chapter 5

**Coin**

Everyone at Overwatch wears multiple hats. It’s a consequence of the field, of their line of work. Being able to juggle multiple identities, multiple roles, is essential to being a member of Overwatch. One cannot simply be just a medic, just a soldier, just a researcher, just a public liaison. Sometimes, one must be one right after the other, able to switch quickly from one to the other. Sometimes one must be all four at once.

It’s strategy, as much as anything; a delicate and dangerous game of chess. Being ‘well rounded’ makes it difficult for the higher ups to compartmentalize their work, and makes it even more difficult for the higher ups to fire them, but a multiplicity of skills instead makes rather easy to for them to reassign should the need pop up.

They are all just pawns in the end.  

Well, Moira is a pawn. Angela is Overwatch’s queen.

She outstrips even Ana Amari in the roles she holds. In her brilliance, she is the head of Medical in Overwatch, in which she runs a tighter ship than even Jack Morrison. Her insatiable work ethic and quest for peace makes her a valuable researcher. Her word is trusted above all others in the courtroom when it comes time to testify. On the battlefield, she’s a symbol of hope that softness still exists in the dark. Her quiet, firm demeanor but quick smile make her a media darling, and a favorite figure on base when someone needs advice.

There are so many facets to her that it is hard to tell where one role begins and the other ends. Where she stops being “Mercy” and starts being “Dr. Angela Ziegler, Ph.D., MD”.

Moira is familiar with many of these sides, and with Angela’s hypocritical idiosyncrasies. It’s probably the reason she fell in love with her in the first place. She’s been barked at enough in combat to know her strengths, but held her in her arms so many times that she knows her limits. She’s been on either side of Angela’s personas, her facades.

It’s a delicate game. Angela has a better time switching between her identities. Moira does not. And perhaps that is the reason she is vilified while Angela is sanctified—she can be in multiple places at once, _be_ multiple places at once…while Moira just has her lab, and her brains, and her biting sarcasm, which she takes with her on missions because she cannot divorce them from herself.

She is not Angela. And for that, she will never truly recover, despite all of her advances in the sciences.

**Contradiction**

Moira O’Deorain revels in being a contradiction.

It had not been her intent, at first, to be so, but over the years she has discovered there is great power in holding the upper hand. To confuse, bewilder, shock…all of those leave her with the high ground as others fumble over themselves to correct assumptions and mistakes.

It’s why she wears make up.

Why she keeps her nails long, painted, filed to points.

Why she takes great pleasure in slipping into something flowy, tight, feminine.

Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition, and even fewer people expect a masculine of center individual in a dress. Her androgyny, her gender queerness, is just as much a part of her identity as it is a tool to get what she wants.

It’s not that she wears traditionally feminine clothing only for show—she does truly enjoy the feeling of silk against her skin, how her calves look in heels—but there’s something about the way men stutter when they come across a woman with the confidence of a goddess standing 6’10” that makes her feel invincible.

When she wears ties, slacks, suits—men treat her as their equal.

But in a dress? She, inexplicably, holds all the cards.

**Teal**

They’re the same damn color as her gloves.

Moira had walked into the experimental lab to check on the results of her newest project and Angela Ziegler had been there. Angela Ziegler had been there, with her back to her, bent over something on the island table; Moira would later figure out that it was her Caduceus staff, which she was repairing after a mission. However, it was not the Caduceus staff, and all of its scientific opportunities, that stopped Moira dead in her tracks.

No, it was the slip of teal where she shirt was hiked up and her skirt sagged just so.

A delicate line of fabric, an underwear waistband, peaking out cheekily at her to arrest her mid-step. _The same color as your nitrile gloves,_ her brain supplied unhelpfully, which made her instantly think of the gloves she had stripped off only minutes before in her lab. The gloves she had stuffed into the pocket of her labcoat before taking the stairs a floor up to where she now stood, frozen in the doorway to the experimental lab staring in the general vicinity of Dr. Angela Ziegler’s ass.

_Jesus._

Those gloves were suddenly a lead weight pressed against her thigh. Did Angela know her underwear was the exact same shade of teal as those gloves? The gloves Overwatch orders in bulk for all of its employees to use for their personal safety.

It couldn’t be a coincidence. She had to know. Perhaps she bought them as a funny little joke to herself, to wear as she went about her day. Perhaps a lover gave them to her knowing her profession. Whatever the case, they are simply too perfect a match to be anything but a planned effort by somebody.

Moira is not the type to think about other’s choice in underwear, but now her mind races. What style of underwear does Angela wear? A sensible slip? Bikini or thong? Hipsters, Brazilian, tangas?

 _No_ , she thinks, stopping herself mid thought. She is a professional, dammit. She is a professional with a doctorate and nearly fifteen research papers to her name. She will not think about Angela Ziegler’s _taste in underwear_.

But there they are, the waistband of those teal panties taunting her from across the room.

As if on cue, the image of Angela in nothing but those panties and a matching lacey bra appears unbidden in her head.

 _Absolutely not._ She is thirty-eight. She is too old for such workplace thoughts. She just needs to get in and out. Grab her data, start the next step of her experiment, then get back down to her lab and maybe pour herself a healthy amount of whiskey.

Easier said than done, of course.

(She only makes it half way.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I really hate the word 'panties', but here I am. *shrugs*

**Author's Note:**

> I regret nothing. More to come!


End file.
